Why Modern Movies Look So Clean and How to Fix Them
Have you ever been watching the newest Hollywood blockbuster and thought to yourself, why does this look so clean and almost fake? Today, the pursuit of higher quality images with 4K, 6K, 12K cameras is all anyone talks about. Digital filmmaking has revolutionized the craft, ushering in increasingly sharp, pristine, and flawless imagery.
But why do we now look at better images and think that it looks worse? Even if we can’t quite put our finger on why, we just know that something doesn’t feel right. Why does Saving Private Ryan from 1998 look better than Hacksaw Ridge in 2017? Why does The Lord of the Rings from 2000 actually look better than The Rings of Power, even though it came out 20 years later?
Or why does The Batman look better than everything else? Why do modern movies look so clean? Do we as an audience want perfection? Or do imperfections add character and authenticity? Or more importantly, what can filmmakers do to make their films more authentic? Let’s dive in
First of all, this topic goes way beyond the film world debate of film vs. digital. It is true that film and digital both have totally different looks, but I’ve also seen digital look like film, and I’ve seen film look like digital. By its nature, film is less clean and something we’re used to seeing in those incredible cinematic masterpieces. But in the right hands, digital can blend perfectly or even replicate film.
David Fincher, who is a master storyteller with films such as Gone Girl, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and so many more, loves working with RED cameras, which over the years have kind of developed a reputation for having somewhat of a digital look. And I’ve even heard some cinematographers refuse to use them.
Yet none of his films look digital in any way. If I didn’t know, I would say that all of them were shot on film because of how authentic they look. Yet, The Hobbit, shot on the same RED camera, looks like a cartoon. Cinematographer Steve Yedlin, ASC of Knives Out, Looper, and The Last Jedi, challenges us to think of a camera not as a look maker, but merely as a data collection device, and that the aesthetics we desire are determined predominantly downstream in the processing pipeline, by what we do with the data, not with which instrument collects the data.
This shows us that capturing your story on film doesn’t simply make a beautiful, authentic experience for the audience, and realizing that the power to control how your film looks is ultimately in your hands and not the tools we put in our hands. That is where we start.
Now or in Post?
Now you might say, well why not just capture the cleanest, most pristine image possible to allow for maximum flexibility in post?
There are plugins and software that give us tools to bring in imperfections. So why don’t we all just shoot that way? Let’s do it. Well, there are elements that we can’t change in post, such as camera choices, lens choices, filters, lighting, atmosphere, all of these things filmmakers must decide while filming.
It all comes down to choices. We would argue that the best filmmakers that land classics are the ones who make bold choices and stick to them. Filmmakers like Denis Villeneuve and his choices on Dune, or Matt Reeves’ choice to dirty up the frame practically in The Batman. These are still industry giants that we look up to, yet in their own words they say their choices might get them fired.
Yet they stick to their choices and sometimes win an Oscar for it.
Lenses
If you begin to see your camera as a data collection device, your first choice is lenses. Filmmakers have many lens options available to them, but the choices break down to these main factors: modern or vintage, anamorphic or spherical, prime or zoom.
Now there’s a lot more to it, but that’s the heart of it. There’s a growing selection of vintage glass rehoused in modern housing so that the metadata can be carried through to post-production. But a vintage set of lenses will have unique characteristics per lens, and color reproductions will be different across the whole set.
Films like The Batman, The Hateful Eight, Joker, and others specifically choose vintage glass that was actually used in films from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Tarantino actually resurrected and retrofitted a 60s vintage ultra-Panavision lens that hadn’t been used since Khartoum in 1966. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 also used the exact 40mm Panavision lens on its Venice shoot that was used in the very first Mission Impossible film. 
The Batman used alpha anamorphic lenses that fell off drastically from the center focus and the edges of the lenses were soft and brought the attention to the center of the frame. Compare this to the ARRI Prime DNA lenses used on countless productions like Rings of Power, Hijack, All Quiet on the Western Front, Peter Pan and Wendy, The Witcher, Men in Black, Solo, Ant-Man, and countless others.
You’ll see a vast difference just with the lenses themselves. Most of these examples are heavily graded and stylized, but if we look at these wide shots from All Quiet on the Western Front, there’s a slight vignette from the grade in post, but underneath, the color is super pristine, crisp, and clean.
Something that doesn’t seem to match a gripping World War I story from the trenches. And even though it’s still a fantastic film, imagine if All Quiet on the Western Front was shot like The Batman. What an immersive experience it would become.
Lighting
Dynamic range and incredible digital sensors combined with advancements in color grading allow for infinite zones and touch-ups on footage today where images are totally visible.
Technically perfect, but really just flat. Many times, you can tell they’re in a studio lit with LEDs, unlike films that use natural lighting and a simpler grade. Great cinematography is all about depth and separation through lighting. The biggest mistake I see in filmmaking today is thinking that they should add more light to make the image look better.
And it technically does look better by not having shadows on faces or removing any darker areas in scenes, but does it actually make it better for us as an audience? Let’s look at Ticket to Paradise. It’s almost as if comfort was more important than the visual results. The film looks technically perfect, details in the shadows and the highlights, exposed and graded well, but is it too perfect?
These Hollywood icons are out in the bright sun, but they’re not sweating or squinting. We don’t want to pay to see unpleasantness, but it comes at a cost where we just don’t buy that these people are actually on an island. We can feel the negative fill that’s systematically added to create depth. Just like we see in Emma as we cut from this wide shot to this medium shot.
The negative fill increases because the crew can now bring them closer. We start to no longer feel authentic and just feel fake. The Batman was lit very dimly, even too dark for some audiences, but their use of lamps and lighting added to what really feels like a realistic Gotham City. It was lit like you were standing right there.
Whether you preferred the lighting or not, you were right there in the middle of Gotham City. A film like The Batman can’t look like Gerwig’s Barbie, Lurhmann’s Elvis, or Parker’s Ticket to Paradise because of audiences’ expectations. But you can’t argue with the fact that The Batman looked better than all of those films.
We all love Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy but comparing them to The Batman are still two vastly different images. Which leads us to visual effects.
Visual Effects
Modern movies are generally more reliant on visual effects than the previous century of films shot on film. Shooting imagery with little to no VFX allowed for more choices to be made in camera because you’re shooting the world right in front of you rather than building it later.
VFX heavy films often need basic, even plates, and modern lenses that digitally connect with the camera to provide metadata are highly effective in streamlining the process. This was very important to Rings of Power, and many blockbusters utilize countless different effects houses to hit their deadlines, so it’s best not to complicate the workflow.
Yet we can return to The Batman and Dune. The latter being very effects heavy, but their vision was solidified in development, and all choices pushed a unified style and design forward and did not get lost in the VFX. The Batman took a practical approach, shooting in the LED volume and trying to capture as much as possible in camera through the glass, rather than adding it later on top of the glass.
This is a distinct choice that technology like the volume can offer filmmakers to let the lens bring all the elements together. Which begs the question, how can I make my films look authentic? Or better yet, what have filmmakers done to authenticate the world that they’re creating? One of the main elements of authenticity is dirtying up the frame.
Dirtying Up The Frame
Now this is a term in cinematography that means exactly what it says, to take the frame and dirty it up. The purpose of this is the idea of putting you in the shoes of a character. Again, authenticity. This can mean actually dirtying the physical frame and lens, or metaphorically, with props, actors, lighting, and blocking.
It doesn’t always mean interacting with the camera, because usually the camera is invisible, unnoticed by the world and characters. This could be shooting through something like windows, over someone’s shoulder, or even just adding elements to the composition. 
This scene from The Batman could be a master class in composition and dirtying the frame. This right here is what we’re supposed to be focusing on, but we have an out-of-focus table on the bottom, a plant taking up almost the entire left side of the frame, multiple lamps, people in the background, people walking in front of the camera. This is not sloppy. This is purposeful and authentic. It makes you feel like you’re really there.
But sometimes, dirtying the frame does in fact interact with the camera. Rain splatter on the lens in The Batman, blood splatter in Children of Men, lens flares, even condensation on the lens in The Revenant makes the audience aware that there is a camera capturing the moment, further connecting the viewer to the world that they’re watching.
Almost voyeuristic. In fact, in The Batman, Greg Fraser actually put silicone on glass and put that on the lens. This would make sure that raindrops would actually interact and the lens itself would get smudges. Talk about dirtying the frame. Sometimes the camera becomes the point of view of a character, like we experience in the first Mission Impossible, The Batman, or even being on the field again in Children of Men.
Art vs Business
To sum it all up, film is both an art and a business. And when we say that modern movies look clean or fake, we’re not necessarily saying they look bad; they’re technically perfect.
Perfectly exposed, perfectly focused, perfectly lit. You see, big studios avoid risk, and I believe that this plays into a big part of why modern movies look the way they do. Indie filmmakers seem to have a vision that drives their art regardless of a big paycheck, which is why we see more soul in independent films than we do out of bigger blockbusters.
Choice
The best examples that we see of a unified vision throughout the entire process to escape that clean and fake look begins with choice. Making a choice for your vision and sticking to it, not playing it safe. Audiences respect that. And if you make movies that you want to see, and not movies that you expect others want from you, then you could find your audience, and your film could end up cemented in cinematic history.
